Marketing Research Chart: Importance of offline lead gen tactics

by Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, and Brad Bortone, Senior Research Editor

In the following chart, we look at trends in offline marketing, and how these channels may still be effective for lead generation.

Q: How do you feel the importance of OFFLINE lead generation has changed over the last three to five years?


While nearly half of respondents believe the importance of offline tactics has declined over the last three to five years, one-third still believes the importance of these tactics has increased.

How do offline channels fit into your marketing mix?

When we posed these findings to Bob Kemper, Director of Sciences, MECLABS, he said, "Conventional marketing wisdom is that the Internet has been -- and will continue for some time to be -- the fastest-rising channel, in importance, for effectively conveying marketing messages to customers and prospects.”

However, 51% of surveyed marketers saw an increase or no change in the importance of offline tactics. Where does your company fall within the above chart? Have you moved more of your lead generation online, or have venerable tactics remained integral to your efforts?

Are some companies purposely "bucking the online trend?”

Kemper also wondered if there is a discernible industry -- or group of industries with a common set of characteristics -- that are consciously moving away from the latest technologies, and increasing their focus on offline channels.

He said, "Perhaps, these respondents found new ways to use offline channels to drive traffic to their websites -- increasing performance of offline channels without decreasing the importance of online lead capture.”

Or, is this trend simply related to budgetary concerns and a lack of financial allocation for online lead generation? How have you maintained your offline tactics to drive leads to your online channels? Has it been successful for your company?

What are your other thoughts on this data? Share your own analysis in the MarketingSherpa LinkedIn Group, for a chance to be published in a future blog post. Include your feedback as either a comment, or a link to a blog post where you offer advice based on this data.

For more information about lead generation tactics, be sure to download the free excerpt from the 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report.

Useful links related to this research

Lead Generation: 5 steps for managing cost and quality of leads

B2B Lead Generation: 6 social media tactics from 7 experts

Marketing Research Chart: Choose your marketing channels wisely